Ever Heard of “Dravidian”? Big Deal: They Probably Started Human Civilization

An earlier article in this language series hypothesized that the earliest human language (probably only one) spoken around 70,000 years ago in South Africa had click sounds just like the native “Bushman” (Khoisan) languages of that area do today. The article pointed out that as one ethnic group pushes out another, like the Bantu peoples pushing out the native bushmen Khoisan peoples speaking click languages, often pockets of the earlier inhabitants remain like some Khoisan tribes further north in Tanzania.

This article hypothesizes that Indo-European languages pushed out earlier Dravidian peoples not just in Pakistan and India, where pockets of Dravidian language speakers remain, but also pushed Dravidian peoples out of Iran and the Fertile Crescent. This article hypothesizes that the languages spoken by the earliest human civilizations, using the earliest writing, Sumerian and the Indus Valley Civilization, were possibly Dravidian related to modern southern Indian languages like Tamil and Kannada.

In the map below, you can see the pockets of universally-recognized Dravidian language speakers left behind in central Pakistan and in north-east India after Indo-European expansionism out of the northwest heading south and east.

This article hypothesizes that the Sumerian, Elamite, and Indus Valley Civilization languages were all Dravidian.